A new version 0.90+svn1209861 is in extras-testing. Changes since the last one:

Fix a crash on startup when restoring a route and GPS is enabled at startup

The OSM map theme with Mercator projection is now the default for new installations

Use miles instead of km in driving instructions and the map scale if the system is configured to use imperial units. Routing dialog tbd.

Fix a crash when using the "Plain Map" theme

When GPS is active and the user activates the screen saver, do not wake up the screen every thirty seconds

@Shinigamijim: Make sure to activate guidance mode as describing here. Note that you need a GPS fix. If you get "info" icons instead of arrows indicating the turn type, then the route comes from OpenRouteService. Disable it in the configuration to make sure only Monav is used.

@itaychi: You can set the map region (visible part of the map on the screen) to Israel and then use the "Download Region" dialog to download tiles from the visible area in different tile levels. That may not be ideal, but works well in practice. You can repeat that approach several times with different regions and/or tile levels.

@abill_uk: Marble is free and it will stay like this. Here's a short excerpt from Marble's (preliminary) OSGeo incubation application:

12. Does the project support open standards? Which ones and to what extent? (OGC, w3c, ect.) Has the software been certified to any standard (CITE for example)? If not, is it the intention of the project owners to seek certification at some point?

Supporting and promoting the idea of Free Software, Free Maps and Open Standards is Marble's primary mission.
We support open standards such as the OGC KML standard, GPX, OSM and the usual ones that are common among Free Software developers.
Marble's internal data structures are modelled after KML. Internally all data is passed as a KML document.

13. Is the code free of patents, trademarks, and do you control the copyright?

Marble itself is free of patents and trademarks. The only related trademark is KDE which is held by the KDE e.V..
Marble's copyright is held by its authors and the code is released under the LGPL 2+.

Last edited by earthwings; 2010-12-29 at 17:04.
Reason: add a note that the osgeo application is preliminary

Yes, our Marble project is fully based on Free Software (LGPL) and we also take care that the data and the open standards we use is created in that spirit. We are also very picky about licensing, so we check the Terms of Use of the data we use very thoroughly. That's also the reason why we don't display Google Maps/Google Earth or Ovi Maps data. Marble is technically capable of displaying both but the Terms of Use (and our distribution policies) don't allow for usage inside Marble, so we don't ship with these maps (no problem, since OpenStreetMap is great!).

While we promote Free Maps and Free Software our licensing model (LGPL) intentionally allows for usage of Marble's framework in proprietary applications. And it allows for usage of "closed maps".

But our heart is with Free Software and Free Maps - and with Marble being a community project! So if you consider getting involved then join us!

With these settings I would expect Marble to start with an English UI, however i get the German translation. I have Marble installed from extras-devel.
EDIT: Scratch that, seems to be a bug in Qt: http://bugreports.qt.nokia.com/browse/QTBUG-1313

Could it be possible to get Marble use the same local stored maps as modRana and Mappero?

modRana's developer has created sqlite3 database and "standard" to store map tiles. Would be good if other map applications in N900 would also support this sqlite-database. Having lots of tiles as separate files will waste space and energy (in general and in so many ways).

NOTE: Because of the FAT32 file-system used in MyDocs, you should consider enabling sqlite tile storage (in options->map->tile storage). FAT32 uses very large per-file clusters, which together with map data that consists of thousands of individual tiles causes huge waste of space. Sqlite can store thousands of tiles in a single file and thus avoids this issue.

- Add the Hike & Bike Map and the Osmarender map themes to the marble-maps package.
- Fix an upgrade problem in the marble-maps package (package manager reported a conflict).
- Disable the Guidance Mode button (left most of the four large buttons on the bottom) when no route has been calculated.
- Don't show the position indicator anymore when GPS gets disabled.
- Improve the look of the Map View Dialog and make it more responsive.
- Update translations
- More optimizations that double the rendering speed for maps scrolling (compared to Release Candidate 1).
- Fix a crash when using the Plain Map theme.

Thanks to all the Marble developers involved.

@Wikiwide: It's a Qt bug, I'm afraid, nothing I can do except than waiting for a fix in Qt.

@zimon: Yes, I plan to add that. At least the "standard" way with png tiles in directories. Not sure about sqlite.

@stickymick: The new version (1.0 RC2) has some speed improvements for scrolling maps, the map views dialog is faster as well.

Actually we do have a map wizard now (trunk) in the Desktop version of Marble that let's you create your own maps :-)

You can add custom maps, but it's not as easy as I'd like. I'm currently using google maps tiles as the OSM tiles have several roads incorrectly named near me. I could register and change them at some stage.

There is a gitorious project called marble-restricted-maps or something. Downloaded archive from there, copied files into a local settings folder (can't find in latest version) and it appeared in map options but didn't work. Put it in /opt/marble/share/marble/data/maps/earth/. You need to make sure folder name matches theme name.

Two things I'd like to see:
1. Guideance to say turn left or right. Need to check but at the moment I've only had "drive right on xxx"
2. Changelog on repository/garage site

You can add custom maps, but it's not as easy as I'd like. I'm currently using google maps tiles as the OSM tiles have several roads incorrectly named near me. I could register and change them at some stage.

There is a gitorious project called marble-restricted-maps or something. Downloaded archive from there, copied files into a local settings folder (can't find in latest version) and it appeared in map options but didn't work. Put it in /opt/marble/share/marble/data/maps/earth/. You need to make sure folder name matches theme name.

It also works in the home folder. You need to put it in /home/user/MyDocs/.local/share/marble/maps/earth/googlesat (or googlemaps or whatever other map theme you like).

Originally Posted by Android_808

Two things I'd like to see:
1. Guideance to say turn left or right. Need to check but at the moment I've only had "drive right on xxx"